The subject of this thesis is the origins and implications of the
elaborate apparatus of assessment procedures which characterises
educational provision in advanced industrial societies. The analysis
is divided into two parts.
Part I which is entitledtSociological Perspectiveslis concerned with
establishing the conceptual framework for such a study. An initial review
of the literature, which delineates both the need for and the scope of
such an analysis, is followed by a review which draws on comparative datatto
identifythe major functions of educational assessment and the way in which
such functions may change their form, but not their essential purpose, in
response to changing social conditions. Having identified these functions
as the attestation of competence, the regulation of competition and the
control of both curriculum content and educational practice, subsequent
chapters in Part I examine firstly-. the way in which the characteristics
of industrial society give rise to the need for such educational assessment
and condition its form, and secondly, how these forms and functions differ
in relation to the idiosyncratic social context of different societies.
Part 11 of the thesis comprises case studies of two national
education systems - France and England. - in which the conceptual frameworks
developed in Part I are applied in some detail to two very different social
contexts. Each case study offers a brief historical review of the role
educational assessment procedures have played in the emergence of the
characteristic features of educational provision in the two countries
studied and examines their contemporary role in terms of both the individual
pupil and the system as a whole. ' A final, concluding chapter discusses some
of the common trends which may be identified in both countries at the present
time and attempts to assess their importance for the future role that
education might play in such societies".